الكاتب: kafej

Thousands joined a march by nationalist groups in Poland’s capital Warsaw in what organisers described as the “largest patriotic demonstration in Europe”.

Participants carried Poland’s white-and-red flag and some burned flares and held Celtic crosses as they marched along a route leading from the city centre to the National Stadium on Saturday.

The event, held every year as Poland celebrates its Independence Day holiday, took place less than a month after the pro-European opposition secured a majority in parliamentary elections.

While many patriotic events take place across the nation of 38 million each year, the yearly Independence March has come to dominate news coverage because it has sometimes been marred by xenophobic slogans and violence.

The event has, in the past drawn, far-right sympathisers from other European countries, including Hungary and Italy. Among those taking part this year was Paul Golding, the leader of Britain First, a small far-right party in the United Kingdom.

Football supporters were prominent among the marchers, some holding banners with far-right slogans. Anti-abortion rights groups were also present at the event, where Christian symbols were on display.

Police removed climate protesters who placed themselves along the route of the march.

Lower turnout

This year’s event was attended by some 40,000 and passed off peacefully, the Warsaw mayor, Rafal Trzaskowski, said.

It came as nationalist forces have seen their worldview rejected by voters. In October’s election, voters turned out in huge numbers to embrace centrist, moderate conservative, and left-wing parties after eight years of rule by a nationalist conservative party that was at odds with the European Union.

In recent years, the annual Independence March has attracted up to 250,000 participants.

The lower turnout was the result of internal splits between leaders of the rally, as well as of a spectacular electoral defeat suffered last month by the far-right Confederation Party, which is traditionally allied with the event.

The party won just 18 seats in the 460-seat Sejm, the Polish parliament. Meanwhile, Law and Justice (PiS), the governing right-wing nationalist party whose leaders joined the march in the past, won the most votes but fell short of a parliamentary majority.

Many on the political right believe that the results of the election, in which the coalition of the liberal Civic Platform, conservative Third Way, and left-wing Lewica came out as winners, will lead to the gradual erosion of the country’s independence.

“We can expect – with a high probability – a change in EU treaties, which will affect Poland’s sovereignty and Poland’s independence in the international arena, and in particular within the [European Union],” Bartosz Malewski, head of the Independence March association, told reporters in October.

“This slogan also expresses our position on the need to emphasise sovereignty and the threat to sovereignty.”

Other march participants agree.

Grzegorz Cwik, from the nationalist Niklot association, told Al Jazeera he fears the “federalisation of the European Union, cuts of military spending, and dismantling of social programmes”.

On Friday, the country’s opposition parties signed a coalition deal, paving the way for them to form a new government after winning the majority of votes last month. But they will have to wait.

President Andrzej Duda has given PiS, which took more votes than any single party in the elections, the first shot at forming a government.

Donald Tusk, the opposition coalition’s candidate to be the next prime minister, appealed for national unity in a message on X, stressing that the holiday is one that belongs to all Poles.

“If someone uses the word nation to divide and sow hatred, he is acting against the nation,” said Tusk, who did not join the march. “Today, our nation is celebrating independence. The whole nation, all of Poland.”

The Independence Day holiday celebrates the restoration of Poland’s national sovereignty in 1918, at the end of World War I and after 123 years of rule by Prussia, Austria and Russia.

Demonstrators the world over have rallied in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, condemning the high rate of civilian casualties in Israeli attacks and calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Major cities, including New York, London, Paris, Baghdad, Karachi, Berlin and Edinburgh, witnessed large marches on Saturday.

Calls for a ceasefire to protect civilians in Gaza have grown more than a month into the war sparked when Palestinian group Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7.

Israeli authorities have put the fatalities at about 1,200, and say more than 240 people were taken captive.

Israel’s non-stop attacks in Gaza have killed more than 11,000 people in 34 days, including more than 4,500 children.

Palestinians say that no corner of the strip is safe from Israeli bombardment. More than 70 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced.

The world’s television screens, newspapers and online media have been filled with pictures of Israel’s war on Gaza.

More than 11,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed so far.

They’ve also featured the October 7 Hamas attacks in southern Israel, which the authorities there say killed about 1,200 people.

Modern technology means there’s more media coverage than ever before, but some of it has been criticised – by journalists themselves.

Hundreds of them have signed a letter accusing Western media of biased reporting of the Gaza war.

Are the allegations fair?

Presenter: Laura Kyle

Guests:

Pacinthe Mattar – Independent journalist and 2022 Nieman fellow at Harvard University

Ahmed AlNaouq – Journalist and co-founder of We Are Not Numbers, a non-profit organisation that seeks to amplify voices and stories from Gaza

Marc Owen Jones – Associate professor of Middle East studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, studying disinformation and propaganda

The Israeli military has pounded Rafah in southern Gaza, levelling residential buildings and camps, leaving no place safe in the blocked-off enclave.

The mass movement towards Gaza’s south, accelerated under intense fighting and through evacuation corridors, has seen tens of thousands of people flee in recent days.

But on Saturday, attacks were hitting buildings in Rafah, the area of the densely populated territory to which civilians have been urged to evacuate.

An estimated 30,000 additional Palestinians went southwards through a corridor opened by the Israeli military on Friday, according to the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA.

The Israeli military said about 150,000 Palestinians have left for the south in recent days from areas in the northern strip where combat is heavy.

The main hospitals that are still working do not have the medical resources to deal with the amount of injuries from the continuing bombardment in the south.

More than 70 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced.

NewsFeed

A 90-year-old Nakba survivor was displaced from her home in Gaza City to the south, covering 5 kilometres on foot as tens of thousands of Palestinians flee Israel’s air and ground attacks in the northern Gaza Strip.